Buried in the back of Stephen Covey’s book, in the last chapter, he writes about an experience he had while on sabbatical of walking into a library, opening a book, and reading one sentence that changed his life. The sentence essentially reads (and here I quote Covey): “There is a gap between stimulus and response, and the key to both our growth and happiness is how we utilize that space.”
Essentially, we are confronted with many stimuli in our lives. Some are obvious – temperature, sound, light, actions. Others are more subtle – emotions, interactions, wayward blog postings. But each of these stimuli changes our course in some way, and the mindfulness of our actions in shaping what our response is, makes all the difference in who we become. Crafting appropriate responses to the events, people, and other stimuli in our lives is the essence of maturity.
It’s this thought that spurred my idea for a blog. There are always gaps between the stimulus and the response, and being able to capture the thoughts that fill that space is challenging. For example, there is a gap between consumption (of say, a blog post) and creation (a comment... so think about what’s happening in your gap). But consumption always leads to smarter consumption, and if I do my job well, better creation.
Great design means that you give the appropriate stimuli to elicit the desired response. Great designers, then, can anticipate the space between stimulus and response, and can assess what will happen in that space to guide a user to that outcome. When we design medical technology, we’re mindful of how patient care is affected. A good design is a device that improves the health or reduces the injury of the patient. But a great design has to be one that is also easy and intuitive for a clinician, nurse, assistant, or caregiver to use. Which isn’t an easy order to fill.
So there you have it - the gap between stimulus and response.
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Essentially, we are confronted with many stimuli in our lives. Some are obvious – temperature, sound, light, actions. Others are more subtle – emotions, interactions, wayward blog postings. But each of these stimuli changes our course in some way, and the mindfulness of our actions in shaping what our response is, makes all the difference in who we become. Crafting appropriate responses to the events, people, and other stimuli in our lives is the essence of maturity.
It’s this thought that spurred my idea for a blog. There are always gaps between the stimulus and the response, and being able to capture the thoughts that fill that space is challenging. For example, there is a gap between consumption (of say, a blog post) and creation (a comment... so think about what’s happening in your gap). But consumption always leads to smarter consumption, and if I do my job well, better creation.
Great design means that you give the appropriate stimuli to elicit the desired response. Great designers, then, can anticipate the space between stimulus and response, and can assess what will happen in that space to guide a user to that outcome. When we design medical technology, we’re mindful of how patient care is affected. A good design is a device that improves the health or reduces the injury of the patient. But a great design has to be one that is also easy and intuitive for a clinician, nurse, assistant, or caregiver to use. Which isn’t an easy order to fill.
So there you have it - the gap between stimulus and response.
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